In this article, we discuss the implications of the fact that adult second language
learners (outside the classroom) universally develop a well-structured, efficient
and simple form of language–the Basic Variety (BV). Three questions are
asked as to (1) the structural properties of the BV, (2) the status of these
properties and (3) why some structural properties of ‘fully
fledged’ languages are more complex. First, we characterize the BV in four
respects: its lexical repertoire, the principles according to which utterances are
structured, and temporality and spatiality expressed. The organizational principles
proposed are small in number, and interact. We analyse this interaction, describing
how the BV is put to use in various complex verbal tasks, in order to establish both
what its communicative potentialities are, and also those discourse contexts where
the constraints come into conflict and where the variety breaks down. This latter
phenomenon provides a partial answer to the third question,concerning the relative
complexity of ‘fully fledged’ languages–they have
devices to deal with such cases. As for the second question, it is argued firstly
that the empirically established continuity of the adult acquisition process
precludes any assignment of the BV to a mode of linguistic expression (e.g.,
‘protolanguage’) distinct from that of ‘fully
fledged’ languages and, moreover, that the organizational constraints of
the BV belong to the core attributes of the human language capacity, whereas a
number of complexifications not attested in the BV are less central properties of
this capacity. Finally, it is shown that the notion of feature strength, as used in
recent versions of Generative Grammar, allows a straightforward characterization of
the BV as a special case of an I-language, in the sense of this theory. Under this
perspective, the acquisition of an Ilanguage beyond the BV can essentially be
described as a change in feature strength.
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